The Importance of Strong Labor Demand
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POLICY PROPOSAL 2018-03 | FEBRUARY 2018 The Importance of Strong Labor Demand Jared Bernstein MISSION STATEMENT The Hamilton Project seeks to advance America’s promise of opportunity, prosperity, and growth. We believe that today’s increasingly competitive global economy demands public policy ideas commensurate with the challenges of the 21st Century. The Project’s economic strategy reflects a judgment that long-term prosperity is best achieved by fostering economic growth and broad participation in that growth, by enhancing individual economic security, and by embracing a role for effective government in making needed public investments. Our strategy calls for combining public investment, a secure social safety net, and fiscal discipline. In that framework, the Project puts forward innovative proposals from leading economic thinkers — based on credible evidence and experience, not ideology or doctrine — to introduce new and effective policy options into the national debate. The Project is named after Alexander Hamilton, the nation’s first Treasury Secretary, who laid the foundation for the modern American economy. Hamilton stood for sound fiscal policy, believed that broad-based opportunity for advancement would drive American economic growth, and recognized that “prudent aids and encouragements on the part of government” are necessary to enhance and guide market forces. The guiding principles of the Project remain consistent with these views. IThe Importance of Strong Labor Demand Jared Bernstein Center on Budget and Policy Priorities FEBRUARY 2018 This policy proposal is a proposal from the author(s). As emphasized in The Hamilton Project’s original strategy paper, the Project was designed in part to provide a forum for leading thinkers across the nation to put forward innovative and potentially important economic policy ideas that share the Project’s broad goals of promoting economic growth, broad-based participation in growth, and economic security. The author(s) are invited to express their own ideas in policy papers, whether or not the Project’s staff or advisory council agrees with the specific proposals. This policy paper is offered in that spirit. The Hamilton Project • Brookings 1 Abstract By conventional measures, the U.S. job market has suffered some degree of slack for about 70 percent of the time since 1980. The absence of persistent, strong labor market demand has a significant negative impact on wages and incomes, with these costs falling disproportionately on the least advantaged. In this paper, I offer a four-part proposal to increase labor demand along with earnings and employment opportunities: (1) reform our monetary policy framework to accommodate more monetary stimulus and reduce the risk of hitting the zero lower bound, (2) develop a Full Employment Fund to reduce labor market slack, (3) support direct job creation programs to boost labor demand, and (4) design international trade policies to safeguard aggregate demand and mitigate the negative effects of trade deficits. 2 The Importance of Strong Labor Demand Table of Contents ABSTRACT 2 INTRODUCTION 4 THE CHALLENGE 6 A NEW APPROACH 11 QUESTIONS AND CONCERNS 18 CONCLUSION 19 AUTHOR AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 20 ENDNOTES 21 REFERENCES 22 The Hamilton Project • Brookings 3 Introduction t is a remarkable fact that since 1980, by one conventional opportunities have long been elusive. But for economists relying measure, there has been slack in the labor market far more on models that assume full employment, as many models do, the often than not. That is, there has often been insufficient fact that the U.S. economy has been at full employment less than Idemand for labor, putting downward pressure on job a third of the time since 1980 is an awfully inconvenient truth. opportunities and wage growth. It is also the case that many of the troubling trends in our Figure 1 shows the difference between the unemployment rate economy, including wage and income stagnation, along with and a frequently used estimate by the Congressional Budget the rise of inequality, occurred largely after 1980. Of course, the Office (CBO) of the so-called natural rate of unemployment, or absence of full employment is only one factor in those outcomes. the rate economists believe to be the lowest jobless rate consistent Expanded trade and technological advances have contributed with stable inflation. Though this paper critiques this concept to slower wage and employment growth for certain groups of of a reliably identifiable natural rate, by this broadly accepted workers. In addition, the loss of union power, the erosion of measure, the U.S. job market has been slack about 70 percent labor standards (e.g., minimum wage levels and the overtime of the quarters since 1980, compared to just about a third of the salary threshold), and corporate consolidation and greater quarters from 1949 to 1980. market power of large firms have all tilted the playing field against less-advantaged workers. These factors help to explain This fact of persistent slack might not be viewed as remarkable the set of adverse wage and income outcomes for workers over by many Americans stuck in places where gainful employment the past few decades. FIGURE 1. Labor Market Slack, 1949–2017 6 4 Positive slack 2 0 Slack (percentage points) (percentage Slack –2 Negative slack –4 1953 1957 1961 1965 1969 1973 1977 1981 1985 1989 1993 1997 2001 2005 2009 2013 2017 Source: Current Population Survey 1949–2017; CBO 2017. Note: Labor market slack is defined as the difference between the actual unemployment rate and the natural rate of unemployment: a positive slack value indicates elevated unemployment. 2017 values are based on the first three quarters of the year. 4 The Importance of Strong Labor Demand But weak aggregate demand—the total demand for goods and Moreover, unlike many of the factors that dampen wage levels services throughout the economy—is an especially pervasive and growth, including eroded labor standards, arguments problem with unique characteristics. By definition, it suggests in favor of strong aggregate demand do not tend to provoke resource underutilization, which implies some degree of market partisan rancor; in principle, policymakers generally agree failure, thus warranting a policy response. Similar to falling on the need for strong demand. That said, policymakers unionization, weak demand erodes the ability of many in the have not yet taken adequate steps to keep the economy at workforce to bargain for higher compensation. Even in the full employment, as is evident from figure 1. Clearly, the absence of unions, strong demand leads employers to bid up problem of inadequate demand is not deemed sufficiently their wage offers to get and keep the workers they need if they are urgent by enough policymakers, perhaps because, as I show to meet consumer demand. In slack labor markets, such wage in the section on labor market tightness and wage growth, its pressures abate. downsides are concentrated among the least well-off. Persistent slack has also been shown to lead to lasting (as Precisely what steps would ameliorate the problem of excessive opposed to temporary) negative effects on the supply side of labor market slack is the subject of much debate. Because there the labor market and the broader economy. Even temporary is no consensus about how to solve the slack problem, partisans shocks can cause permanent damage if workers’ skills erode often argue for their favorite solutions—tax cuts recommended or if spells of long-term unemployment lead them to give up by conservatives or infrastructure build-outs suggested by and permanently leave the job market. A recent, rigorous look progressives—with insufficient evidence and economic rationale. at these effects in the labor market finds that workers in areas To improve this discussion, I first examine the relevant evidence with relatively large unemployment shocks during the Great and economic theory, then propose policies to boost aggregate Recession had significantly lower employment and earnings demand that are rooted in that assessment. years later (in 2015), relative to similar workers in places with milder upticks in unemployment (Yagan 2017). These impacts I propose a four-part policy response. First, the monetary were particularly damaging for lower-wage workers, presaging policy framework should be reformed to reduce the risk of results shown later in this paper on the relative impact of slack hitting the zero lower bound (ZLB) and to ensure that the at different wage levels. central bank has the ability to support the economy during a downturn. Second, we must expand our thinking about fiscal Other research shows the long-run impact of demand shortfalls policy and aggregate demand beyond recession-fighting to on potential and actual gross domestic product (GDP), though encompass sustained fiscal policy during weak expansions. I economists remain uncertain how much of that loss is truly therefore propose a mandatory Full Employment Fund (FEF) attributable to persistently weak demand. DeLong, Summers, that expands and contracts with need. Third, as a complement and Ball (2014) argue that much of the post-2007 gap between to this fund, I propose measures providing for direct job earlier and later vintages of CBO’s estimates of potential creation. Finally, I note that in the presence of the ZLB, GDP—in other words, the decline in CBO’s estimate of persistent trade deficits can constitute a drag on aggregate potential GDP in a given year—can be attributed to transitory demand, and I propose policies to both restore lost demand shocks becoming permanent. In the second quarter of 2017, and reduce the trade deficits themselves. that difference amounted to just over $2 trillion, which is the difference between the 2007 projection of potential GDP in This proposal begins with an analysis of the historical extent 2017Q2 and the 2017 calculation of potential GDP in 2017Q2. of economic slack—the persistent absence of strong aggregate It amounts to a loss of about $6,500 per capita.